Far fewer teens having sex, or kissing…in Japan

TOKYO, August 9, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – For the first time since they began taking the survey in the mid-1970s, researchers found drastically fewer high school or college students are having sex – or even kissing. But North American parents should not rejoice just yet: the results come from the Land of the Rising Sun.

The last survey conducted by the Japanese Association for Sex Education (JASE) in 2005 found 27 percent of high school boys had sex. Seven years later, they found only 15 percent of boys had done so, a 50 percent drop in seven years. High school girls were also more chaste, decreasing from 30 percent to 24 percent.

The trend held true among their counterparts in college. Some14 percent less women and seven percent fewer men had sex than in 2005.

JASE, which surveyed 7,700 students from October 2011 to February, found today’s Japanese are not simply avoiding intercourse; they are avoiding all forms of physical intimacy.

The downward trend extended to how many teens and young adults had never been kissed.

More than one-third of men in college had not had their first peck on the lips; nearly two-thirds of high school males had not. Slightly more females had experienced a first kiss – numbers still down significantly over 2005.

The results marked the first decline since JASE began taking the survey in the mid-1970s.

Only among junior high school children did the rate of sexual intercourse hold steady at four percent of boys and five percent of girls, a one percent increase for females.

By contrast, in 2011 some 47 percent of American high school students said that they had sex at least once. Only 11 percent of college-age women and 14 percent of college-age men were virgins.

In 2005, In junior high, four percent of boys and girls had sex in 2005; four percent of boys had this year, and five percent of girls had. Surveyed 7,700 students in junior high through college in 11 locations from October 2011 to February.

The survey noted the age of sex, and kissing, had gone down in the last few years.

Some ascribe the waning interest in the wiles of the flesh to the culture of soushoku danshi. Literally translated “herbivore men,” it indicates a generation of young men passive about sex and uninterested in relationships. /

While the young sex rate is a welcome sign, some are concerned at what the lack of early relationship formation means for the island’s plunging birthrate.